Last Flame
by PowerZone
Summary: Ash is engaged to Dawn. But when a woman comes between their conscience, a test of fairness is put to their limits. Is it something that holds back judgment of what is love or not? COMPLETE - story is a bit more moral than romantic.


**LAST FLAME**

A Pokémon fanfiction by PowerZone

* * *

**Author's Note:**

The adoption of this fanfic comes from one of my favorite stories I read during my first year in college. The title of that story is "Dead Stars" written by Paz Marquez-Benitez, a Filipino writer who authored the first Filipino modern English-language short story, Dead Stars. The main pairings are Ash and May and Ash and Dawn. However, much is emphasized in Ash and May. Enjoy!

* * *

Through the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed and scaled into his bedroom, quietly enshrouding his mind and whispering into his every thought. The mess that he had made of life, all the sorry thoughts that weighed him down deep into melancholy. An excited murmur of conversation came from the living room where Professor Oak and Delia Ketchum were busy puttering away among the rose pots.

"So when is it going to be held?"

"I don't know yet. Ash is not so specific, but I definitely understand that Dawn wants it to be next month."

Professor Oak sighed impatiently. "Hasn't he decided for himself yet? I mean, look, he's already in his twenties! And I perfectly believe he's capable of..."

"I don't really think that he's in a hurry," Delia interrupted becomingly. "But Dawn has already made up her mind."

"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not marry her?" Professor Oak said, almost on his feet. He then went into a little trance and recalled something. "Mrs. Ketchum, do you remember how much in love he was?"

"With Dawn?"

"Of course. He has not had another love affair I know of," Professor Oak said patiently, though he knew he was challenged. "Well, the guy's been quite enthusiastic ever since he started his relationship – flowers, serenades, notes... and quite a talented singer he turns out to be!"

Delia laughed. "Seriously?"

Ash's head is still resting on the windowsill as if he's listening for some termites underneath the wooden posts. Yet, he remember that period with a wonder mixed with frustration. This was less than three years ago. He could not understand why everything happened with such ecstasy yet ended with a tormenting regret seeping into every inch of blood in his body. It was from the end of temptation's trident – a special kind of craving that had seized on him one quiet night when a perfect moon was lit under the dappled shadow of the trees around the park. He might have missed something, such as passion. Maybe it was emotion that others told about a mere fabrication of the fragile imagination, an exaggeration of what's common to everyone, or a glorification of monotonies calling out the single name that shriveled his mind into smithereens? Back in those days, it was a stranger to him – for he had a desire else to reach. But sitting quietly on his bed and ignoring the sparkling liquid on his face, he could revive the days of his restlessness, the feeling of unsettling haste, such that he knew too well in his youth when something memorable was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time to see. So he had seized the cloak of Fate and wore it around himself, but it tightened too much the deeper he walked forward in pursuance to something he could not almost win from the very start. He was very much engaged to Dawn. Why would men mislead their lives in the turmoil of passion? Greed? Such that men would sacrifice all what's within their reach just to fulfill their craving of excitement?

"What do you think happened?" Professor Oak interrogated.

"Well, it's something natural every woman has to deal with," Delia answered lightly. "Warm now, cool tomorrow. And the temperature can rise, and they become cooler." She sighed almost disappointingly but she kept her posture to smile. "I can't really delve what Dawn or Ash are thinking of the moment, but since Ash is on the last escape of his youth, I am perfectly confident that he can decide for himself on the next courses of life."

* * *

Just a few weeks ago, six weeks precisely, May meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name or how she looked like; but when he had gone with his mother in a little stay in Vermilion City to visit his aunt, everything took a place for things he had not so expected.

A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of everyone in the house that she was a recent and very welcome arrival, because a little gathering took place at that time. Throughout the evening, Ash and this young woman became acquainted in the patio of his aunt's home. Almost without knowing her name, the night passed quickly, but he was able to get the information of her name. A rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young woman should have told him earlier. Ash felt quite embarrassed with himself.

"That's nothing," she said. "When I wanted to introduce myself, I recall a very embarrassing experience."

"Oh," he drawled out.

"My name is pretty common, you know. When somebody even mentions the word itself, I feel jumpy. But I guess it's a little, um, mistake that I might have to adapt with."

He laughed along with her.

"For quite a common name, I do think there's some... uniqueness."

To him, May was an angel in times of distress. When Ash found himself singing at a low volume some song that played on his head, he was appalled when May was singing along. He had been wondering irrelevantly whether she could sing; she had such a charming voice.

For many succeeding visits, he became closely acquainted with the girl. While his mother and a few other people had gatherings, objectives unknown, the two of them would go out to the patio to chat. The quiet warm hours passed by delicately, every second ticking to its last strength. May was not prone to unprovoked jealousies. She believed in the rigid virtues. If a man were married, he would have to be committed to his wife. If he were engaged, he could not possibly be committed to another woman. Ash realized he was not so open with himself, that he was giving her something that would not be denied or beckoned imperviously. It was almost too simple to forget the most stringent details that came into mind the second before – all because he was alone with this delicate lady. The beloved woman, poignantly sweet in every fashion, he was standing close to her by the edge of the patio, the shadows around from the trees encircling the yard below – all enfolding.

"Here in this night, I find..."

Ash and May stood looking out into the still night. Sensing some unwanted intensity, she laughed for a moment, asking, "Amusement?"

Ash chuckled. "Well, it's the spirit that... drives me." Somehow, he begins to lose his logical track.

"Well?"

Something inside him made his heart beat rapidly. It was not from the untraceable sweat building up in his body or the heat driving up the temperature of his complexion.

"I don't know what's compelling me to do this," he said to her.

May looked up to the tree shedding its shadow upon them. In the distance, a small swarm of fireflies strayed in from somewhere, bringing their elusive light closer to where they were standing.

"Mystery," she answered lightly. "It's probably mystery driving you..."

"Not in some," he quickly said. "Not in you."

"We've only met for a few weeks, Ash." It was the first time she said his name.

And this followed. "I could study you all my life and still not be driven by the mystery."

May sighed. She did not want to keep this any longer.

Six weeks swiftly passed, almost seeming in the memory, yet they had been so deep, so charged with compelling power and swiftness. Neither the past would give some relevance or the future would give some prediction, so he lived only by the present – day by day with intensity. In one of the visits, they were given the freedom to walk outside of the house. The feeling almost tore him asunder, but Ash managed to keep his cool, until they arrived at the beach on a cool sunset afternoon. May found some entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out-curving beach. Her footsteps were narrow and arched. Ash smirked to himself for his sneakers which he removed forthwith and tossed them up on dry sand.

When he reunited with her, May flushed and smiled with honest pleasure.

"I'm enjoying myself," she said with innocence.

"Very much," Ash replied. "It almost looks like home to me, but the beach is a few miles from home."

A breeze issued from the waters. For a moment, it blew away the brunette's hair and flowed gently with the breeze. In the picture was something of much eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. May had distinction of tantalizing charm that cannot almost be avoided.

"The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" he asked her when they sat down on the sand. The sand underneath them felt light and plushy. Water continued to flow towards them like reaching out for them.

"I really wish it would last longer," she muttered. He wished it would conform to her wish. But, "This might be the last time... we might visit each other."

He casted a look on her. "The last? How come?"

"I heard that it would be the last gathering," she answered.

Ash noted some evasion.

"Do I seem perplexed to you?"

"If you really are, you don't look like it."

"Not perspiring or breathless, as a young man ought to be..."

I tried to stop her. "But..."

"Always unhurried, too unhurried, too calm," she smiled to herself. The irony was a weight to suffer.

"I wished it would be true," Ash said after a pause and another close listen of the bracing waters on the sand. "Well, it's not so hard to think that I might be calm and peaceful at a time like this..."

"Like a Tauros?"

Ash flinched strongly. "M-Me?"

"T-That's not what I mean..."

He nudged her quite forcibly. "Whoa, I thought I was going a little overboard with myself with that."

The two of them laughed in rhythm with the waves and the Wingull soaring overhead them into the updrafts of the bay.

"You live here, right?"

May looked down. "Well, I'm staying here with my uncle and my cousins. I live in Petalburg City, actually." It almost made her less detached, less unrelated.

"That's a distance away," Ash said almost disappointedly.

"Oh, but I'll be here."

"I'd like to see your home."

"Will you come? It's rather dull."

"Well, being dull does not live up to being calm and peaceful?"

May laughed. "Well, suit yourself."

"I'll just inquire..."

"Inquire about?"

"The house of the prettiest girl in town."

Taken quite aback, May decided to become a little serious. "This is where you will lose your way. And that's insincere."

"It is," Ash averred slowly, but emphatically.

May's sigh was impatient. "I don't know what to say..."

Toward the northwest, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting ferry of crimsoned gold. The velvet started to rise above behind us.

"Why did you say this would be the last time?" Ash asked her quietly as they stood up and brushed off the sand.

"Well, I'll be going to Petalburg City, my home," May answered.

"When?" after a long silence and a last glimpse of the tranquil waters.

"Tomorrow, perhaps," she said. "My father's a gym leader, you know." Ash remained silent for a moment as if trying to look for words to console himself. "Well, all has been said is said."

"Can't I come to say goodbye?"

"You don't have to!"

"But I want to." Ash was become a little desperate as he unconsciously found himself May's hand, to which May almost shrugged it off.

"There's no time," she said this almost impatiently.

Stillness, a vibrant quiet that affected the senses as did solemn harmony; when all sounds of violence that ruptures what's deep inside, the contentment that we have built up are reduced to no larger that a little wisp full of regret. May turned and looked in his face, in her light but saddened eyes a ghost of sunset sadness.

"Home is so far from here."

"I know," Ash said to her as if trying to consolidate for the sadness. "This place is very different, and I cannot get rid of those things from my mind."

"Things?"

"Those things... where one commits too much a mistake." Ash said it quite lightly. He walked closer, and he touched both of her hands. She blushed hard.

"N-No," she muttered and she pushed them back. Ash gripped his hands so near his own. "I can't." At the touch, she turned her face away. "Goodbye."

* * *

He had remembered the route to the home where he and his mom had swiveled through the city streets to reach that home. A small bag of goods hung over his left shoulder as he made his way to the intended recipient. All what he had to do was deliver the goods and return home. But to think that the recipient would live in Vermilion City, it would take much caution for Ash. A few days passed since she said goodbye to him, so it need not much that Ash would attempt to find her. The delivery done, and ready to head home, Ash made his way through a small market. Suddenly, his slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. At the edge of the market, a girl was training with her Beautifly on a small field connecting to a small stream leading off to the sea. The girl was striking and vividly alive – the woman that could cause violent commotions in his heart, yet he, Ash, had no place in the completed ordering of his life. Her glance of seriousness then turned into doubt and dissension when their eyes suddenly met.

"I thought you went back to your home," he said in a voice that was both excited and troubled.

May called off her Beautifly from training and returned it to its Pokéball. "So um, Ash, what are you doing here?" She asked perplexedly.

"Mom just told me to deliver some goods to your aunt," Ash answered. The two of them started walking at the edge of the market. "So, why haven't you gone home yet?"

"My cousin asked me to stay until they are ready to go."

Ash fell silent for a moment. A critical question raised in his head: where had all their talk led them?

"Um, Ash," she broke into his silence, "I wish to congratulate you." Her tone told him that she had learned, at last.

"For what?"

"Your wedding, of course!"

"I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know – the visitors are always slow with the news," she continued.

He did not listen so much to what she said as to the uncertainty in her voice. He heard nothing to enlighten him, except she had reverted to the formal tones of early acquaintances.

"Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly yet shakily.

"When they are of friends, then I guess so."

"Would you come if I asked you?"

"When is it going to be?" May asked interestingly.

"Around July," he replied briefly. "Well, would you come?"

May's answer was a bit airy, "Why not?"

"No reason, really. I'm just asking. So, will you come?" he repeated the question a second time.

"If you will ask me," she said disdainfully.

"Then I ask you."

"Then I will be there."

There swept over the spirit of Ash Ketchum a longing so keen that it was pain, all the bewilderments, hallucinations, of the present were not, and that this woman by his side were his long wedded wife, returning with him to home.

"May," he said in slow and thoughtful manner, "did you ever have to choose between something you wanted to do and something you had to do?"

"I don't think so."

"I thought that if ever you experienced something like that, then would understand someone who was in such situation." Ash felt quite guilty for raising the issue, but he knew that it had to be struck down before things would get any more tenser.

"You're fortunate," he pursued when she did not answer.

"Are you sure what you're doing?"

Ash doubles with his thoughts. "I – I don't know, May. Maybe, not. Well, there will be a time when we will become confused with his, but it might be foolish to ask whether one will or will not pursue against it."

"But why – why," her muffled voice came. "Oh that's your problem after all."

"Are you interested?"

"Why should I?" She took a quick glance to her aunt's home, just a few ten meters from where we were standing. "I – I have to say goodbye, Ash." Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.

Had the final word been said? Maybe it had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope lingered in his mind thought set against that hope were a few years of engagement, a very near wedding, perfect understanding between the parents, his own conscience, and Dawn herself. It meant to be literal for him, instead of reading between the lines.

Back at home, he looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa and having a conversation with a neighbor. Delia was away. Ash tried to control his aversion.

She was one of the few who had the gift of acceptance. Anywhere, she was always herself, a woman past first bloom, with aspiration and a full grasp. She was pursuing a relation about something, something about her carrier, a Pelipper. Ash perceived, so he half-listened, understanding imperfectly. At a pause, he drawled to fill out the gap. "What of it?" It almost sounded ruder than he had intended.

"She's not married to him," Dawn insisted in her high-pitched voice. "Besides, she should have thought of us. Mom practically brought her up. We never thought she would turn out bad."

Where did this information come from? Who fed her carrier with such sort?

"You're positive about her badness," Ash commented dryly.

"But what do you approve of what she did?" her voice was rising, something ugly was going to happen.

"No," he answered, impelled with a desire to disturb what's going on in her mind. Immediately, the neighbor left the place and they continued this verbal exchange in his bedroom. "All I said that it's not bad."

"Why shouldn't it be? You're almost... immoral! I didn't know that you had such ideas like that!"

"My ideas?" he retorted. "The only thing I want to conduct is fairness. I'm not trying to inflict some harm on anyone. Living with a man to whom she is not married – is that it?"

"She's ungrateful, I tell you," Dawn said this as she pushed him back with the end of her pointer finger. Her eyes flare up like the prominence.

"The trouble with you, Dawn, is that..." he stopped immediately and realized that he went too far.

"Why are you angry? I don't understand you at all! You've been indifferent towards me lately. I know what some are trying to keep from me." The blood surged into his eyes and his hearing sharpened to points of acute pain. "Why don't you tell me what's going on inside you? Before it's too late, at least tell me frankly what's been in your mind lately."

Ash was suffering through this. "Yes," he said hesitatingly, "I tried to be fair, I tried to be the best I could be so that I would bring some peace for us. But I doubt..."

Dawn advanced forward, her temper off the scale. "What do you mean? Whatever my faults and no doubt there are many in your eyes, I have never gone out of my way, of my place to find a man."

Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that it was he who had sought her? Or was this a covert attack on May?

"Dawn," a desperate plea was coming out from his words, "if you suppose, I...?"

"If you mean you want to take back your word," she was suddenly flustered, "why don't you tell me you are tired of me?" she immediately pushed him aside and stormed out of the bedroom and left him completely shamed and unnerved.

The final word had been said.

* * *

As Ash leaned against the ferry rail to watch the evening settling over the sea, he wondered if Dawn would be of any significance to this trip. Ash had to find the elusive woman, who did almost nothing to inflict such bitter damage on his sanity. That the search was leading him to that particular city should not disturb him. The inner tumult was of no surprise to him; he had been used to be in such storms. He realized that he could not forget May. Maybe it time, the moon above would cease to shine whenever he needed it. He was not unhappy with his marriage. There was no rebellion in him: only the calm to what he recognized as irresistible forces of substance and of character. His life had simply led him away, to which end he could not recognize, but to such end that was both a challenge and a burden. From his complete detachment, he felt strangely peaceful. When claims pounded too insistently, he retreated into the inner fastness, and from the vantage he saw things and people around him as distant and unfamiliar. At times did Dawn feel baffled and hopeless; he was gentler and more tender, but far beyond her reach.

Petalburg City was springing with lights. Evening brought some attention to the place, while Ash took no time to look at the sights and sounds. Inflections of the landscape appealed him for a short time. Such singing of the night wafted around the city and brought him inner peace.

Eight o' clock quickly came. He arrived in the little neighborhood. All he knew from May was that her father was the gym leader, so he perceived that it would have to be a grand place. After receiving directions from a kind passer-by, Ash continued on, his heart irregularly beating the more he inched closer to his destination. The thought of May in the still place filled him with such sadness.

How would his life be now if he married May instead of Dawn? Had he meant anything to her? That unforgettable crimson-and-gold afternoon haunted him with a sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. Why had May not married? Faithfulness, Ash reflected, was not a conscious effort at memory. It was something else, maybe an awareness of irreplaceability. A cool wind blew over his head with an impulse that sounded like an unfinished prayer.

In the gardens of her home a fruit tree threw its angular shadow athwart the stone wall. This must be May's home. Somehow, he had known that he would find her house because she would be sitting at the window. The house was normal like everyone else's. He sensed rather than saw her start of surprise.

"Good evening," he greeted her.

"Good evening. Are you supposed to be in town?" she could not recognize him.

"On, a little... business," Ash answered painfully.

"Please come up."

He considered this well. May had left the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came downstairs to open the door. At last, Ash and May were shaking their hands.

She had not changed much – a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it as he looked thoughtfully into her eyes. She asked him about the home town, about anything, in a sober mediative tone. He conversed with ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take his eyes off her. What was lost from her? Or maybe the loss was his. The girl must have noticed, for she blushed.

Gently, he pressed her hand at parting. But his hand felt emotionless. Did she still care? It was uninteresting, he knew. The moon already had set, and from the corner of his eye, a star drew its final light before it extinguished into the immutable blackness of space. It was all over. Why had he been clinging onto that foolish dream. A fool's love he experience inasmuch worth that he could not win everything since the beginning. Had he been seeing the last flame of the fire before leaving a trace so noticeable yet too much ignored?

An immense sadness invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some refuge of the heart far away where grasses provide comfort, and where they live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.

**The End

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**

Read and review. Comments, suggestions, criticisms and such are highly appreciated. The title itself hides a meaning so mysterious it catches our imaginations in the least situations possible. And what's supposed to be there in every romantic story only appears rarely. That's right, the word "love" only appeared ONCE in the entire story – at the last sentence!

Special thanks to LuciferIX for pointing out my mistake. I admit that I really have a poor eye for looking out for small detail. Anyway, this is version two of the story.

PowerZone


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